Social Networking

Principles of teaching

Uses in the classroom and beyond

• Peer-to-peer interactions: students are able to leave messages for and interact with other students registered within a class or on the network, using text or uploading recordings.
• Sharing resources such as photos/sound files: for a given topic, such as 'Tourism where I live', students can upload a PowerPoint presentation, a photo slideshow, an mp3 audio file or a video recording that presents the topic in their own words and style.
• Collaborative project work: if a 'shared pages' project is used, students can create work and leave it for response or correction by their peers in the shared space, later refining it further or responding to the suggestions of their peers. Tourism, as a topic, for example, could benefit from English students being able to see their area from the perspective of a French student via French web materials. Tools such as 'brainstorm' and 'ask me questions' can be used to elicit a range of opinions and project materials.
• Monitoring each other’s language performance: if students make two or three suggestions for improvement to their counterpart’s work (not so many that they change the piece of work completely or damage the confidence of the writer) the reciprocity of the arrangement can help students to refine their work in a supportive and encouraging environment.
• Developing writing skills: writing skills are enhanced by interaction with other students, both class peers and foreign school counterparts.
• Building vocabulary banks: students can save the new words they learn and create separate vocabulary files for them within a text document which can be placed online for remote access.
• Sharing grammar difficulties: within a specified shared area students can help each other with grammar points by the use of threaded discussions that enable them to ask their counterparts whether their phrases are acceptable English or French.
• Cultural projects: controlled social networking lends itself to cultural projects where students have the ability to post web links, and audio and video resources to illustrate their ideas and to help their counterparts gain access to authentic materials for their project.
• One-to-one and group to group: e-mail exchanges can sometimes be problematic in the case of student absence, where some partners have nobody to respond to. The use of a social networking site with easy access to all participants can help avoid this as can the breaking down of classes into smaller work-groups of perhaps four from each school.
• Whole class teaching: use of an interactive whiteboard can allow a teacher to show a class the overview of the project and perhaps allow synchronous communication between classes if timetabling permits. Additionally, the teacher can use examples of work to develop target language competence, elaborate upon grammar points, or, more ambitiously, explain texting conventions which may have been used in inter-pupil communications online.
• Access to resources from home: students can work in their own time and explore shared areas and other areas of the networking site from home and can copy their work from the school network to access at home.

Author: John Hopwood: Languages/ICT consultant, Language College, St Julie's Catholic High School for Girls, Woolton, Liverpool.